Healthy Garden
Healthy Home
Healthy Garden
Healthy Home (HGHH) is a system of farming around household premises which
satisfies the family nutrition and food requirements to some extent. The main
feature of HGHH, it is situated around household area and sustains family for
its food and nutrition requirement as well as supports in income generation
activity for family. HGHH provides vegetables, fruits, spices and fish required
for a family while it also conserves herbs and flowers that have aesthetic and
religious value. Garden utilizes the land available near to house and grows
various species of plants useful for fulfilling family requirements. It also
conserves biodiversity by retaining various useful species and helps to
maintain biological diversity around household. Health garden provides
opportunity for income generation as well as saves money for buying daily
vegetables and fruits.
Family Nutritional
Security
Nutrition refers
to the food required by a person to live a healthy life. It is required for
growth and development of cells, tissues or required for repairment of damaged
cells and production of energy required for the body of a human being. Family
members should consume all the nutritional food required for their healthy
living. Basically, nutrition is divided in five major types and these are; carbohydrates, proteins,
vitamins, fats, minerals and water. Carbohydrates provide energy required for
the body; proteins build up the tissues and organs; vitamins supports in growth
and development of cells, tissues and body; fats protects heart, liver and
lungs; minerals help in growth of muscles and water regulates temperature of
body. Therefore, it is quite necessary to consume foods that provide the
essential nutrition for growth and development of body. Foods such as cereals,
pulses, green vegetables, meat and eggs when consumed during meals and dinners
provide all the essential nutrition. Combination of foods that provide the
entire nutrient necessary for human growth and development is called balanced
diet.
Features of Health
gardens
Healthy garden
establishment includes better planning including its layout of the various
components like compost, water sources, vegetable areas, fruits plantation
regions etc. Better planning of home garden allows utilizing spaces and
resources. Healthy garden has its specific plots. It is established to fulfill
the nutritional requirement of the family. It is required to plan for various
crops to be grown in the garden. Separate areas are allocated for vegetables
with various types of growing habbits and season. This is required to utilize
the sunlight, moisture, soil nutrition and spaces. Healthy garden has some
major features, these are:
-
is
around household vicinity
-
produces
year round crops
-
utilizes
local available inputs
-
helps in food diversity and bio-diversity
-
ensures family nutrition security
-
promotes integrated crop production
Vegetable
gardening is a major component of healthy garden. It is an allocated area
inside a garden where seasonal as well as off-seasonal vegetables are produced.
It is experienced that for a five-membered family at least 200 square meters’
vegetable garden is required. Vegetable garden provides daily vegetables for a
family in a year-round basis. Therefore, it is taken as most important part
within healthy garden. It provides opportunity to cultivate year round crops
and also supports for income generation by selling surplus produce in nearby
market.
Action Research
and Field Implementation
DCA is starting the concept with 700
families in Gorkha and Dhading districts and plans to scale up from the
learning. In between we will need to do a lot, prepare ourselves, and come up
with clear implementation guideline. We are thankful to DCA and our partners
for their hard work thus enabling us to live up the “health home healthy
garden”.
The agriculture and livestock activities
around the homestead is ensured by the technical and trained staff. They
provide technical training and support on the appropriate agriculture and
livestock inputs. This may vary from the drought resistant seed varieties to
latest breeding bucks. Homestead refers to the home and the immediate
surrounding land used by the family. Many small plot production activities
happen at this level including vegetable and fruit production or household fish
farming. Most of the poor people spend a very high proportion of their income
on food as they do not have enough land to produce food for all their needs. They grow some produce on small
plots of land around their homestead or on common property resources or common
lands. Homestead plots are easily developed under individual initiative.
Growing vegetables within the homestead is also more convenient and secure.
Additionally, the disaster risk reduction
is mainstreamed into the concept by preparation of disaster risk management
plans undertaken through identification of hazards and vulnerabilities.
Ensuring that people have access to safe water, water safety plans are embedded
into each water supply systems. Water safety plan is a management tool for
securing drinking-water safety from water source to point of use through
continuous monitoring and preventive maintenance of water supply systems. For
further reinforcing resilience of the community, technical advice will be
facilitated for agriculture and livestock insurance. Given the high acceptance
of the community on livestock insurance, DCA has planned to expand insurance
schemes to water supply systems. There are many water supply systems across the
country that have been damaged due to natural disaster such as landslides and
flood or pipeline damaged during road development in the rural areas. The
insurance of these systems would be helpful for the communities when major
repairs are required. The premium for the insurance can be paid through the
routine monthly water tariff collected by the users committee.
For more : Chiranjibi Rijal, csrijal@gmail.com
Cecial Adhikari, cecial.adhikari@gmail.com
